


Hard Calls

by lauraschiller



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Command Ethics, Episode: s03e13 That Hope Is You II, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28702104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauraschiller/pseuds/lauraschiller
Summary: How do you forgive someone for saving you against your will? Paul still resents Michael, but his family helps him put things in perspective. This story has been cross-posted to FF.net.
Relationships: Adira Tal/Gray Tal, Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets, Michael Burnham & Paul Stamets, Michael Burnham/Cleveland "Book" Booker, Paul Stamets & Adira Tal
Comments: 8
Kudos: 60





	Hard Calls

“How long are you going to keep doing that?” asked Hugh.

“What?”

“Staring daggers at our new Captain across the room. It’s very unsettling.”

Paul flushed guiltily as he realized he’d been doing exactly that. He was in the mess hall having lunch with Hugh and Adira, and he’d meant to enjoy every moment of having them both here with him safe and sound. It was hard to hold on to that mood, though, with Captain Burnham so directly in his field of vision. She looked so relaxed, her braids slung over her shoulder, laughing at something Mr. Booker had said as if she didn’t have a care in the world. As if she didn’t even remember what she’d done.

_“Get me out of here!” Paul yelled. “Hugh and Adira are going to die horribly if I don’t get to them. Michael, please!”_

_“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes full of tears, but that meant nothing to him as she forced him into the pink cocoon of the escape pod and ejected him into space. Drifting farther and farther away from Discovery, from any chance of reaching his loved ones, he had never felt so helpless …_

“Paul?” Hugh’s warm hand covering his jolted him out of the flashback just in time.

“I’m sorry to ruin dessert like this,” said Paul. “But I can’t help it. It’s just … it’s the hypocrisy of it all that gets me.”

“All right,” said Hugh, in that deceptively mild tone with steel underneath it, the same one he used for his most annoying patients. “Please explain to us how saving your life is such a crime.”

Adira hid a smile behind their hot chocolate, clearly in agreement with Hugh. Illogically, this only made Paul angrier. He dropped his spoon into his pistachio ice cream with a clatter.

“We all know Burnham’s always been the one to throw Starfleet principles out the airlock where her family’s concerned. There was the Battle of the Binaries, and that time she went AWOL to break her boyfriend out of jail … but the one time it’s my own family in danger, does she let me help? No, she shoves me into that damn escape pod without even listening to me! And don’t tell me she made the right tactical decision, I know she did. It’s not as if I wanted Osyraa to put a neural lock on my head and make me fly the spore drive for her. But does knowing that make me any less pissed? Absolutely not.”

He kept his voice to a low, vehement hiss, not wanting to be overheard by his shipmates, but he felt like shouting. If Saru weren’t still on Kaminar, he would probably have turned around in concern even from the other end of the room.

Hugh looked taken aback, picking at his Portuguese egg tart as if the golden filling had suddenly lost its flavor. 

It was Adira who finally broke the silence. 

“I know what you mean,” they said quietly. “Gray didn’t listen to me either when he disappeared before. He just did it with no warning. I hated that.”  
The symbiont-joined teenager glanced at the fourth chair they always left empty, holding one of those silent conversations only they could hear. They smiled. “I know, Gray. I forgive you. My point is that when another person does something to you, it’s usually more about them than you, you know what I mean? He never meant to hurt me, he just gets frustrated with being … you know ... this.” Adira gestured awkwardly at the empty chair.

“A telepathic projection,” Hugh suggested kindly. Adira nodded.

“Are you saying I should forgive Burnham because she’s got issues?” Paul snapped. “Doesn’t that apply to this entire crew by now?”

He felt guilty the moment the words left his mouth. Something about the ghostly presence of Gray at the table always made it harder to say anything petty or unkind. For the young Trill who had died in Adira’s arms and was now clinging to existence in the Tal symbiont’s memory, Paul’s grudge must seem very trivial. 

“We’re not saying you should do anything,” Hugh replied with deliberate patience, “But I, for one, disagree with you about Captain Burnham’s character. She’s come a long way from the mutineer she used to be. She has learned how to make hard calls and put the mission first. If anything, sending you and your tardigrade DNA out of Osyraa’s reach only proves it.”

“Exactly,” Adira chimed in, and after another sideways look: “Gray says the really selfish decision would’ve been to let you stay and get caught.”

Hugh tensed up at the idea, his dark eyes wide with remembered anxiety. Paul knew that look. It was his turn to reach across the table and touch his partner’s hand for comfort.

Somehow, in all the nightmare scenarios that had been haunting him for the past several days – Hugh and Adira dying slowly of radiation poisoning or a malfunction in the derelict ship – Paul had never stopped to think of how they would feel to lose him. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, bowing his head. “Thinking I might lose you both, well ... I guess I just lost my head.”

In those frantic moments when he’d been begging Burnham to let him out of the spore cube, he’d wanted to tell her that life without his family would no longer be worth living. Losing a partner for the first time had nearly broken him. Losing a partner and the protégé he loved like his own child would shatter him to pieces.

Except that it hadn’t, because they were still alive. Because the crew, including Burnham, had come back for them against all odds.

He looked from one to the other – white uniform, navy blue jumpsuit; Hugh’s skin like coffee and cream, Adira’s milky pale; Hugh’s brown eyes, Adira’s blue ones; so different and so dear, each in their own way – until their faces began to blur with Paul’s own tears.

“I understand,” said Hugh.

“So do we,” said Adira.

For a moment, all three of them held hands across the table before returning to their desserts. Though he could neither see nor feel it, Paul was certain that Gray’s hand was there as well.  
They finished their meal (talking about work with all their might to lighten the mood), picked up their empty trays and went to recycle them. 

As they walked past the table where Burnham and Booker sat, Paul could see what he’d been blind to before: the way the Kweijani moved, slowly and stiffly compared to his usual high energy, and the way Burnham watched every spoonful of soup her partner ate, even as they laughed and chatted as usual. Paul knew the look of a couple recovering from shared trauma; he and Hugh had been there. Book must have been badly hurt sometime in the past few days.

Burnham wasn’t selfish, or thoughtless, or anything else Paul’s angry mind had accused her of being. She was someone who knew exactly how he felt.

His eyes met those of his newly minted captain for a long moment.

Her gaze was steady, but he still remembered the tears streaming down her face as she’d programmed the escape pod to surround him. Those tears were far from meaningless to him now.

He gave her an awkward, but genuine nod as he passed by.

She smiled warmly in return.


End file.
